Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807) • Hacker News Board

Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)

#91

Post by jeffbee » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

ardy42 wrote: post #68

goodluckchuck wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh... Even CNN admits that the following headline is a lie... Let's follow the rabbit trail: > Trump suggests voters should commit fraud The source that article links is another one of CNN's own articles: > Trump appears to encourage North Carolinians to vote twice to test the system The first paragraph of that article then gets closer to the truth: > President Donald Trump on Wednesday appeared to encourage people…

> Moreover... "Appeared." If the author believes Trump was saying that, then say Trump said it. However, the author knows that's not true, so the author said he "appeared" / his words could be twisted. Utter cowardice. Trump is so confused and unclear sometimes that it's hard to tell exactly what he's trying to say, hence the "appeared.". What he says is newsworthy, and some of the most likely interpretations are sho…

Where I live if you are registered to vote by mail and you show up at the polling place on election day, you have to vote provisionally, which means that you have to make a sworn statement about why you are weird, and your ballot will be subject to additional verification to make sure you had a right to cast it.

Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)

#92

Post by zarkov99 » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

civilized wrote: post #49

dalbasal wrote: post #25

When I was 15, there was a bus bombing near my school. A kid in my class was the grandson of a well known politician. A newspaper ran with a completely made up story about how it was his bus line, and how the grandfather had panicked. A few days later a fact checker called his mom. Not sure if they ran a retraction. It seemed incredibly disrespectful to those who were on the bus. Two died. About a year after that, so…

> IMO the problem is expectations. "Restraining it (a newspaper) to true facts & sound principles only" is not just boring... it's unimportant. It's the narrative that makes it salient. > Calling out intellectual dishonesty is a road to hypocrisy, usually. It's very common to have someone call it out and practice it simultaneously. You have a right to your opinion, of course, but frankly I find this revolting. There'…

I agree, its despicable. I would also suggest there is an enormous opportunity to make money for an organization that pursues and documents the truth, with integrity and to the the best of their ability. Society cannot possibly work if its members inhabit vastly incoherent bullshit bubbles and deep down inside we all know it.

Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)

#93

Post by ardy42 » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:13 PM UTC

jkaptur wrote: post #71

JackFr wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge... “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story bac…

Is there a name for the opposite effect? If not, I propose the "Sinclair Effect" after "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." You open the newspaper to an article on some subject that you know well, because your salary depends on it. In Tourre's case, finance. In mine, tech. You read the article and see that the journalist isn't a subject matter ex…

> Is there a name for the opposite effect? If not, I propose the "Sinclair Effect" after "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

I think this is a fantastic comment, especially given the cavalcade of robotic quotations of that "Gell-Mann Amnesia effect" passage that happen whenever the press comes up. One should definitely read the newspaper with a certain degree of skepticism, but I feel that people who take the "Gell-Mann Amnesia effect" to heart often get into weird places (like thinking that reading raw scientific papers is somehow a replacement for reading the newspaper, as if anyone could actually keep up with them in more than a narrow area and science is the only thing that matters).

While I think the self-interest from the Sinclair quote is definitely a reason to doubt "Gell-Mann Amnesia effect" dismissals (i.e. maybe the story actually is right, but you think it's wrong because you have biased take), I think the problem you're getting at is ego. A lot of people want to be the guy who is smarter or sees things more clearly than others, so they latch on to ideas that let them superficially dismiss things that others trust as a way of proving their greater insight (maybe only to themselves).

I think it's useful to just see the news for what it is: a timely first rough draft of history. First rough drafts are always going to have errors, but you'll be the last to know if you wait for those to be corrected before reading. If you keep up with the rough drafts, you'll see the corrections as the stories unfold.

Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)

#94

Post by Loughla » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

antipaul wrote: post #87

loughnane wrote: post #58

This dovetails with something I've been thinking much about recently: providing a classical education, or at least a dose of it, to my kids. Jefferson was a big proponent of this as well [0] My reasoning is that there are few other venues that young people, in their formative years, encounter such examples of deep critical thinking. I used to think it snobbery to reference Socrates/Plato/Aristotle, etc. But reading t…

We have a hard time talking to each other these days (eg, Republicans vs Democrats in US). So I also feel that education, specifically a liberal arts foundation, could broaden people’s minds so that we’re not just shouting at each other, but can actually converse as somewhat rational beings.

But this boils down to initially defining the "purpose" of education. The US can't even agree on what the purpose of education is. Many see it as you do - broaden minds and encourage thinking. Many others see it as life-skills 'training' designed to teach adult survival skills. Still others think education should point specifically, and directly to work, or, in other words, be 'job-skills' based.

We don't even have a clear understanding of what is best, nor do we have an agreement on when each serves its best purpose. The whole thing is a mess.

Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)

#95

Post by rement » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

loughnane wrote: post #58

This dovetails with something I've been thinking much about recently: providing a classical education, or at least a dose of it, to my kids. Jefferson was a big proponent of this as well [0] My reasoning is that there are few other venues that young people, in their formative years, encounter such examples of deep critical thinking. I used to think it snobbery to reference Socrates/Plato/Aristotle, etc. But reading t…

This reminds me of a T.S. Eliot quote

> Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

> Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)

#96

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #46

News organizations have to compete for people's attention so they present the news in a way that impacts people's emotions most strongly. Fear is a favorite subject. Most news is framed in a way that highlights how it MAY negatively effect the reader. FEAR is a very effective way to get and keep people's attention. Also, the news has to compete with entertainment so it's entertaining. It's the first "Reality TV." You…

[deleted]

Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)

#97

Post by sumtechguy » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

intotheabyss wrote: post #14

mrfusion wrote: post #8

As an exercise, go read the front page of cnn.com right now. Do you still believe all of it?

I get the impression that cnn.com looks like an entertainment site, not a news site.

It really is. They copied the FoxNews formula in 2008. Fired anyone who could edit or fact check anything. They then turned the formula up to 11. Most of the 'news' is pick your flavor and enjoy the editorial. Because that is about all you are going to get out of them. News comes way down on the list of what you get out of them.

Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)

#98

Post by Loughla » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

war1025 wrote: post #74

dublin wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fake News is far more common than people think (not just the Gell-Mann effect, but that helps...) I quit trusting anything I saw in the media in 1998, when my wife and I saw NBC totally faking a hurricane report in Corpus Christi. The reporter was in a rain slicker, and there was a lackey standing off-camera with a hose spraying water. Corpus was on the dry side of a hurricane deep in the Gulf that wound up hitting n…

Actual news these days comes from message boards such as this. TV / Radio news is little better than entertainment. The trouble the news industry is having is that you can get an equal amount of information from social media without all the holier-than-thou garbage coming from news anchors.

I don't know why, but the thought that 'trustworthy' news sources are pseudo-anonymous or actually anonymous sources on a message board scares the ever-loving-shit out of me.

Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)

#99

Post by zarkov99 » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #39

dalbasal wrote: post #25

When I was 15, there was a bus bombing near my school. A kid in my class was the grandson of a well known politician. A newspaper ran with a completely made up story about how it was his bus line, and how the grandfather had panicked. A few days later a fact checker called his mom. Not sure if they ran a retraction. It seemed incredibly disrespectful to those who were on the bus. Two died. About a year after that, so…

I've been in the vicinity of news/magazine press or knew the subjects personally about a dozen times. In every single instance the facts were grossly misrepresented and in the three cases at Vice/Motherboard told the complete opposite story of the actual truth. Vice's article about "Sugar Weasel, the One and Only Clown Escort" is a complete fabrication (well, other than his own self-delusions) and any basic fact chec…

I became interested in Jordan Peterson and the my Google feed noticed. The amount of fabrications that started popping in my feed, from famous outlets, opened my eyes to just corrupt the news media is. Its hard to overstate how despicable and toxic this is.

Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)

#100

Post by rs999gti » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

glial wrote: post #72

alpha_squared wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this sort of holds true for any modern news org in the west (and possibly world-wide). Look at the profit incentives and it makes sense which way reporting trends will go. The more outrageous/unbelievable the story, the more eyeballs; the more eyeballs, the more ad revenue. Some news orgs definitely take more liberty than others in bending the facts of a story just enough to carve out a demographic niche that…

Business models based on advertising revenue are ruining the world.

> Business models based on advertising revenue are ruining the world.

What else do news agencies have to make money?

The could sell stories and news for a subscription. But the news can be had for free in other places.

They can't really sell classifieds anymore since Craigslist, Facebook, and forums have taken those posting monies away.